Joanne Chuvalo wants to make clear that she is not a drug-using, gambling-addicted, gold digger, despite what her husband’s kids have claimed.

“I read all that stuff about me and I would divorce me, too,” she says from the Caledon home she once shared with boxing legend George Chuvalo. “It’s not true. The stuff they’re saying is not true.”

The bitter fight over the deteriorating 80-year-old former heavyweight has pitted his kids against his second wife. His two adult children from his first marriage have filed a divorce on his behalf using their power of attorney. Joanne, 61, insists they are brainwashing her husband of 24 years and that he wants to come home to her.

Her lawyers wanted the divorce action suspended to create a chance for reconciliation. Last month, Ontario Superior Court Justice Frances Kiteley ruled Chuvalo has suffered such “significant cognitive impairment” that he can’t make a decision about reconciling. The first boxer to ever take Muhammad Ali to 15 rounds has now been found so mentally incapacitated that the court has appointed a public guardian on his behalf.

Joanne has just filed an appeal.

In the divorce application filed by his children in 2015, they allege Joanne threw their dad out of the house in 2014 and has drained the couple’s finances of almost $450,000 to fund a gambling addiction and prescription drug problem.

“Are they kidding?” she asks incredulously. “That is not true. I did gamble a little bit to pay the bills but I’m not doing that now. It didn’t work. And if I was a gold digger, why did I go after someone who had his house foreclosed on him? No, that’s not me.”

Rather than dipping into their funds, which require joint signatures, Joanne insists she’s paying the bills on their three properties — the Caledon and Toronto houses, as well as a cottage. “I’m sinking. I can’t keep up.”

As to their separation, she maintains she didn’t kick him out. “George and I have never discussed divorce. We never decided to call it quits.” Instead, she blames bed bugs.

On his return from a speaking engagement in Calgary, she says Chuvalo slept at their home in Toronto, only to discover it had been infested with bed bugs. While he was in virtual quarantine, Joanne says his children got involved.

“He was brainwashed,” she claims. “I did nothing but wait for him, just wait.”

Joanne admits they had arguments: Chuvalo was once charged with uttering death threats — later withdrawn — and placed under a restraining order. She insists she only called police because years of blows to the head had begun to make him act strangely and she wanted to get him help.

Over the years, he’s tried to return to her, she says, but invariably the police are called with accusations that she’s kidnapped him. In 2016, she says Chuvalo was whisked away from their Caledon home on the false premise that he was being flown to Ali’s funeral. “There was nothing I could do. If you tell him something, he’ll believe you.”

This ugly battle is such a tragic ending to a life that has known so much heartache. Almost exactly 32 years ago, the boxing legend discovered the body of his youngest son, Jesse, dead from a gunshot wound to his head. In 1993, son Georgie Lee died of a heroin overdose. Days after the funeral, his heartbroken wife Lynne committed suicide. In 1996, son Steve also died of a heroin overdose.

In the midst of all that pain, Chuvalo told reporters he’d found happiness again with a colleague of his late wife. They eloped six months after Lynne’s death and Joanne believes his surviving two children never forgave her.

Now the judge has implored both sides to “bury the hatchet” for Chuvalo’s sake.

“I have formed an understanding that each is convinced that the other is out to manipulate and control George for personal financial gain,” Kiteley said. “It is time for those who are or have been close to George and important to his welfare to find a way to collaborate in his best interests.”

Joanne vows not to give up on getting him back. “I’ll probably lose the house because of legal costs but I don’t care if I have to rent a room somewhere. Right is right and I’ll die trying.”

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